By the time Bruce Ray finally hauled his moose into the town of Ashland late Tuesday morning, he had a pretty good idea what people would say.

He said the same thing when the 841-pound bull with the monstrous rack stepped out of the woods the previous evening, trees hanging from its massive antlers.

He likely said the same thing – several times – as he and his friends struggled to get the animal through thick underbrush to a road 2,000 feet away.

And he said the words again on Tuesday, when, after hours of cutting and pulling, he finally drove into the tagging station at Gateway Variety.

Ray’s phrase, as you may imagine, begins with the word “Holy.” It ends … well, I’m pretty sure you know what it ends with.

And if you saw Ray’s moose … or heard about it, and the effort he and his hunting party expended in order to get it back to town … I suspect you understand.

“[I shot it] at about 5:30 [Monday],” the hunter from Freedom said. “About 2,000 feet off the road, with a bow. It was a five-yard shot.”

Ray could have shot the bull from a longer distance, but the moose didn’t offer up the perfect broadside shot until it stood 15 feet away from an increasingly nervous hunter … and the hunter’s son. From that distance, the spread of the enormous rack – eventually measured at 561/2 inches – was obvious.

“My son was right behind me, and he kept saying, ‘Shoot it. Shoot it.’ But it wasn’t broadside. I had to wait until it was broadside.”

After the shot, as moose hunters often learn, the hunt became an endurance test.

“Then the fun began,” Ray said. “[We worked] until about 11 [Monday night], and then we went back out this morning to finish up. We probably dragged it 1,500 feet [last night]. We had a lot of cutting to do.”

Finally, as noon approached on Tuesday, Ray and his party began their trip to the Ashland tagging station. It didn’t take long for word to spread, and 15 minutes before Ray arrived, whispers began.

At rural tagging stations, that’s the way news spreads. One man sees something … drives ahead … passes the word along … and the next thing you know, everybody’s either an expert or a first-hand witness.

“There’s a monster moose coming in,” some said.

“They shot it last night,” others added. “Couldn’t get it out of the woods … Wait until you see it … It’s got to go a thousand pounds.”

As it turns out, the moose weighed in a bit less than that, though wildlife biologists estimate that an 841-pound field-dressed moose would weigh 25 to 28 percent more on the hoof … or, about 1,000 pounds.

While waiting for his trophy bull to be weighed, Ray wasn’t concerned about what the scale ultimately said.

Ray knew what the moose weighed. At least, he knew what it felt like after hours of grueling labor.

“When we got him to the road, he weighed 3,000 pounds,” Ray said with a chuckle.

And that was good enough for him.

– . –

In two weeks, hundreds of curious onlookers will flock to Greenville for the beginning of the second week of moose season. Until then, the Wildlife Management Districts in the western part of the state are off-limits to hunters.

This week, spectators looking to see how the moose hunters are faring head to other tagging stations. Tops among those may be the station at Gateway Variety in Ashland, which Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife personnel said is the busiest during the first week of the season.

Of course, you don’t have to get the “official” word from DIF&W officials to come to that conclusion.

Just ask Stacy Durrell.

Durrell, who is working at Gateway Variety this week, said moose hunters – and curious moose-watchers – have kept workers hopping.

‘[Monday] was nonstop until about 2 o’clock [in the afternoon], and then things slowed down a bit,” she said. “You had to literally run. We’re making sandwiches and pizzas and running [moose] tags [in and out of the store]. There’s two of us back there, so we’re both running.”

During the late-morning rush on Tuesday, a steady stream of trucks pulled into the lot at Gateway Variety. Many carried moose, and few hunters arrived without having to wait five or 10 minutes to tag their moose.

DIF&W wildlife biologist Rich Hoppe, who was helping staff the tagging station for the state, said he was surprised by the number of moose hunters who enjoyed early success. He thought Monday and Tuesday’s warm weather – temperatures in the mid-70s – would have made hunting difficult.

“Yesterday we [tagged] 55 here, and today we’re up to about 24 [by about 11 a.m.],” Hoppe said. “I’m quite surprised. With the heat yesterday, I didn’t think they’d bring many in, that we wouldn’t have anything like that. That was a very good day.”

– . –

As of 11 a.m. on Tuesday, Aaron Mitchell of Brooks held the top spot on the bragging board at Gateway Variety.

Of the 79 moose tagged to that point, Mitchell was the only one who had bagged a critter weighing more than 1,000 pounds.

His field-dressed bull weighed in at 1,024 pounds – about a 1,250- to 1,300-pounder on the hoof, according to the DIF&W’s Hoppe.

John Holyoke can be reached at jholyoke@bangordailynews.net or by calling 990-8214 or 1-800-310-8600.